 | |
| Pronunciation | /ˈfiːə/ FEE-ə Irish: [fʲiə] |
|---|---|
| Gender | Female |
| Language(s) | Irish |
| Origin | |
| Meaning | deer, wild |
Fiadh is an Irish/Scottish language feminine given name. Its meaning can be interpreted as "deer", [1] "wildness" but also "respect". [2] [3]
| | |
| Pronunciation | /ˈfiːə/ FEE-ə Irish: [fʲiə] |
|---|---|
| Gender | Female |
| Language(s) | Irish |
| Origin | |
| Meaning | deer, wild |
Fiadh is an Irish/Scottish language feminine given name. Its meaning can be interpreted as "deer", [1] "wildness" but also "respect". [2] [3]
Fiadh was largely unknown as a given name in the 20th century, although the Irish word was known in the context of the fulacht fiadh and the word for a deer.
Irish given names for children experienced a spike in popularity after Vatican II when societal and parochial pressure to give saints' names to children was eased. Many of the Irish language origin names which were popular in the 1960s and 1970s (such as Sinéad, Deirdre or Emer) were out of fashion by the end of the century after reaching critical mass. Fiadh was part of a subsequent wave of names that became popular in the post Celtic Tiger period when the Irish language was perceived to have more social cachet. [4]
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) record of births registered in the Republic of Ireland noted the first instance of Fiadh in 1994, with three more in 2002; this had multiplied tenfold by 2011. The name entered the national top ten for feminine given names by 2018 and became most popular for the first time in 2021. [5]
The CSO reported that Fiadh was the third highest ranked baby name for girls in 2022 with 320 registrations. A further 79 instances of Fíadh were registered. [6] Since 2018, the CSO has a policy of counting accented variations as separate names. [7] When taken together, the total number of registrations for Fiadh and Fíadh was 399, exceeding the total registrations of the most popular girls name in 2022, Emily, at 349.
Met Éireann proposed Fíadh as a storm name for the 2025–26 European windstorm season, but as the UK Met Office expressed concern that it sounded too like fear, it changed to Fionnuala . [8]